Monday, 4 May 2015

5.0.33 out now

Again, it has taken me quite a while to get this release out, having squeezed in development as and when I can, but hopefully it will be worth the wait. There are some exciting enhancements, amongst which is the ability to make debugging your games easier and more enjoyable.

ADRIFT 4.0 supported the ability for the game designer to change the background colour. This functionality is now available in ADRIFT 5.0, allowing background colours to be changed at any point within the game. The background will remain this colour until changed again, or set back to the default.

The format is: <bgcolour = "colour">
Where colour is a named colour (e.g. red, green, blue etc), a hexadecimal colour code (e.g. #FF8800, #123456) or simply "default" to set back to the default colour.

Default colours for the game can now be set in Developer. This allows the author to set the game colours appropriately for the atmosphere of the game. It also allows them to set a suitable background colour for any font colour changes within the game.

To set default colours, go to Options > General > Default Colours

The person playing the game can choose whether to allow these colours, or to use their own preferred colours.

All reference types now support multiple references per task command. This means you can have %location1% and %location2% in the same command. Same goes for Number, Text, Direction and Item (previously only Object and Character supported multiple references).

The debugger has been significantly improved, providing visibility and the option to change all property values of each of the item types. To see the properties, select the individual item within the debugger tree view, where they will be listed like so:

The property values can be changed by either selecting a new value from the dropdown, or by over-keying the value currently there. Changes will be reflected immediate within the game currently being played in Runner.